Why We March: 'This should have been rectified way back'

These are the days of #metoo. These are the days of being “woke.” From Parliament Hill to Hollywood, women are coming forward to share stories of being harassed, abused and assaulted — and to demand better. We asked some participants to tell us, in their own words, why they’ll be taking part in Saturday’s Women’s March in the nation’s capital.

“I’m a member of the Grandmothers Advocacy Network, or GRAN, and we advocate locally, nationally and internationally with governments and other organizations to better the lives of the grandmothers in sub-Saharan Africa who are looking after their grandchildren, and youth of sub-Saharan Africa.

“We have three issues we’re working on right now: affordable medications for all; education for all; and gender-based violence. Regarding gender-based violence, the United Nations secretary general has a campaign called the Unite Orange campaign against gender-based violence, and GRAN, right across Canada, supports that campaign. It’s 16 days of activism each fall. And last year we decided to join the Women’s March because we’d been so involved in the 16 Days of Activism campaign and this seemed such a good fit.

“And what we have found is that our voices are amplified if we join with other organizations. You can go further with other people than you can alone.

“One of our focuses this year is violence against older women. The African grandmothers we’re trying to help are mostly older women, but in many countries they don’t keep statistics on women after the age of 49. That’s their cutoff. They’re not counted, and as a result, older women and the violence they experience remain largely invisible.

“Now that’s Africa, and you might think ‘What’s that got to do with our march?’ But if you remember back to last fall, the stories on the elder abuse here in Ottawa, there were several deaths. And there was the one where someone had video from one of the rooms. That’s not an isolated incident; that goes on a lot.

“It was Africa and the AIDS pandemic that first got me involved. But also I was much older when I discovered that there was sexual violence in my extended family. My grandfather sexually abused his daughters, who one by one as they got older left Newfoundland and moved to Boston because they had relatives there. And they started talking one night and realized they weren’t the only one, that they were all sexually abused.

“When they discovered this, my grandmother had just had a new baby, and they got together and wrote her a letter. And she was very courageous. She went to the justice of the peace, or whoever it was at the time, and charged him, and left him immediately. This would have been in the early 1940s, and she took her family and moved to Corner Brook and raised them on her own and took him to court. I didn’t know that growing up and always wondered why my grandmother had such sad eyes.

“So why am I marching? This should have been rectified way back. I come from a generation that was socialized completely different than women today, and what we tolerated growing up was kind of accepted as normal or routine, and you didn’t speak out about it. You didn’t like it, and often it was very uncomfortable, but you let it go because that’s how you were socialized.

“But I think women today are socialized completely differently. I know my daughters are completely different, and their kids are even more so. And I think it’s time that we all got together, and I think more men are coming onside and speaking out. I think the majority of men were always onside. It was a small percentage who weren’t, but as long as men are afraid to speak out, then of course it’s just going to be perpetuated, again and again and again.

“As long as women are not equal to men, we’re not going to have peace, and without education, you’re never going to get out of that realm of poverty and despair, and not reach your full potential.

“I don’t think there’s a woman alive today who has not experienced either something verbally, physically or emotionally, or just disrespect. And I think it’s so important that fathers, and mothers, talk to their sons, and make them aware that standing by and doing nothing makes you a part of it. They have to know how to react, and I think if they’re prepared for it, it’s easier to stand up and say ‘That’s enough of that.’”

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